Meeting Deadlines

Meeting Deadlines

Last February we were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about an app idea
that would push us into local fame: a Husker football iPhone
application.
At the time, there were only a few competitors and we were sure that our
app could be the best. In the first few weeks, our app enjoyed a few
hundred downloads and we marveled at its success. We thought, “If we
replicate this for every team, we’ll be bootstrapped by next May.” So we
did, and sales were good, at first… Along the way, hurdle after hurdle
stifled our growth. One of them was meeting deadlines. Time after
time, we released sports apps after that sport had already started.
Here’s the shakedown of why we missed the mark and what we’re doing to
hit it now.

​1) Scope: Our most inhibiting trait has always been scope. We
planned for simple projects, but kept adding new bells and whistles.
We’ve completely redesigned our fan apps to have an iphone-esque
interface. Then we added more modules like videos, chat, and a live
scoring ticker. Each of these additions always created several new
opportunities for error, and with each you must apply Murphy’s law: what
can go wrong, usually does.

Lesson learned: dial back scope. Half the project because you’ll always
underestimate the time that a seemingly simple update will take.

​2) Lack of Focus: Not only are we three part-time employees trying
to bootstrap from our regular jobs, but we also pile on extra projects
for no apparently good reason. This is what happened with our
Kloudspeak debacle. After starting out with a Husker app focus, we
decided to create a Twitter client for conferences. This was a major
sidetrack when we should have been focusing on getting out our
money-making sports apps before their seasons began.

Lesson learned: if your goal is to bootstrap, then concentrate on what’s
making you money. Perfect that as much as possible and then allow extra
time for new projects.

​3) Apples iPhone Wait Queue: Time and time again, Apple’s two week
queue has cost us deadlines. Whether it was a tiny bug or a
miscommunication with the rating system, both will send you to the back
of the queue.

Lesson learned: Test your apps thoroughly and plan to release a month
ahead of your designated deadline. This allots enough time for one/two
errors to be caught by Apple during the approval process. And once
again, Murphy’s law applies.

​4) No room for error: With just three guys working part time, we
don’t have enough resources to make extravagant apps or lose focus. The
good part about this, is that we don’t need to do either of those things
to put out a good product. The bad part is that we don’t have any wiggle
room for error when planning and executing.

Lesson learned: Simple, simple, simple. Keep things simple and release
often. There are countless apps that do much less than ours that rank
higher because they focus on just delivering sports news or scores and
that’s it. They focus on simplicity. We came out of the gates trying to
kill ESPN with just three part-time employees. That’s a tough goal to
achieve and that’s why, from now on, we’ll specialize on something
simple, and do it better than all of the major players.

So how have we adjusted? With our newest March Madness release, Final
Madness,
we limited scope. The app only does one major thing: displays and
updates scores for all of the March Madness teams in an easy to navigate
bracket interface. At times there was talk of adding a make-your-own
bracket module to the app. It was argued that we just wouldn’t have
enough time to incorporate such a system without adding a slew of
possible new bugs, back end services, and cluttering the simple design.
Corey (our mobile developer) fought to keep our app simple and it ended
up being a great decision. Even though we’ve released the app, we’re
still working out some of the kinks to deliver the best experience
possible. Corey was right, we didn’t have time to mess with extra bells
and whistles, especially when March Madness is quickly approaching.

So learn from our mistakes and meet back next week when I discuss
competitors and the new iPhone scene.